


Your Mission, Should You Choose To Accept It

by artemisscribe



Category: Thunderbirds
Genre: Espionage, F/M, Origin Story, one line cameo for Lemaire, other brothers present but not to the extent that they need to be tagged, some very minor romantic tension between J&P
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-23
Updated: 2018-09-23
Packaged: 2019-07-16 01:29:56
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,562
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16075529
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/artemisscribe/pseuds/artemisscribe
Summary: When Lady Penelope finds herself at the centre of a bidding war at a charity auction she ends up in the hands of a very unusual winner. A.K.A. How Penny gets recruited to International Rescue.





	1. Chapter 1

“The Tracy brothers are here!” Camilla hissed, leaning heavily on the back of Penelope’s chair as she stage whispers to the rest of their table.

“Don’t be silly,” Meera tells her, tugging her wrist to get her to sit down, “They don’t come to this sort of thing.”

“How do you know?” Camilla demands, “Are you secretly friends with them and you just haven’t told us for the last four years? And besides, if that boy isn’t Jeff Tracy’s son then I’ll eat my hat.”

Their group all crane their necks in the direction of the door, as subtly as a group of socialites can at a charity gala. Entering the room is probably the most attractive man Penelope has ever seen. The numerous publicity shots, paparazzi snaps, kiss and tell articles, and a very brief stint as a model in college have done Scott Tracy no justice at all. In print he’s the good looking heir to a multi-billion dollar fortune, in the flesh he’s a god; not a single lock of his thick, dark hair out of place, perfect cheekbones, his piercing blue eyes standing out against the just right shade of his tan and all of it packaged up in an exquisitely cut dinner jacket that Penny’s trained eye can judge down to the price tag and Savile Row tailor.

“I want to climb him like a tree!” Meera murmurs in a voice of awed appreciation,

“Amen sister” Camilla laughs, “And the rest of them aren’t half bad either!”

That’s very true, though none of them seen to achieve the same level of unrivalled perfection of their elder brother. The younger boys too young, the middle son too short and as for the second child of the family,

“Who’s that?” Camilla asks as a tall, slender young man with a shock of red hair joins the other four boys to say something to Scott that has him laugh loudly and sling an arm around the red head’s shoulder.

“John, I believe” Penelope says, vaguely remembering a profile she’d read on Jeff Tracy and his sons a couple of months previously.

“John who?” Camilla asks, utterly oblivious to anything that isn’t in the society pages,

“John Tracy,” Penelope says, fighting the urge to roll her eyes,

“There are  _ five _ of them?”

“Yes, he’s a year younger than Scott I think. Very private, doesn’t seem to socialize much.”

“Huh,” Camilla says as she considers this new Tracy brother. “I can see why, he doesn’t seem particularly friendly.”

This was the thing that Penelope liked about Camilla, she was the world’s biggest airhead, but at times she was remarkably astute at reading people, and while John Tracy was perfectly poised and seemingly charming their host, Lady Felicity, there was something rather disdainful about him.

“Maybe he’s too good for the likes of us?” Penelope wonders aloud as she watches him give the room a judgemental sweep, until his eyes meet hers where she swears he gives the very slightest of frowns, and just for a moment she wonders if she’s been made as someone else who doesn’t want to be here. But the moment passes, and he goes back to what seems to be his supporting act to The Scott Show.

While the rest of her party quickly forget him in favour of his glamorous and good looking older brother, Penelope finds herself becoming oddly fascinated by John Tracy as the evening progresses. Though they’re sat close enough to the boys’ table to easily hear Scott directing questions and comments to John, he never seems to reply with more than a non-committal noise or a few brief words. The two or three times Penelope glances over she’s almost certain he’s on a phone or a tablet under the table, although she never manages to get a proper look since each time she steals a glance she finds him watching her. It’s a little unsettling.

The most he speaks all night is just before the auction. As the servers pass out the number cards at the tables Penelope hears his quiet ‘No thank you’ before Scott intervenes.

“Um, excuse me miss!” Scott calls, “He will take one, don’t take no for an answer.”

“Scott, I don’t want to” John sighs,

“It’s fun” Scott insists,

“Not for me” John replies.

“Alright, it’s for  _ charity _ .”

“And I will happily write Felicity a cheque matching whatever she raises tonight if it’ll get me out of this.”

“Will you at least  _ try _ to get in the spirit of the thing?” Scott sighs, “Just for one damn night?”

“But I don’t want any of these things”

“What not even...” there’s a distinct sound of paper as Penelope listens to Scott flick through the catalogue, “A two week stay on a luxury yacht? Wouldn’t you like a yacht John?”

“We own three.”

Penelope made the mistake of taking a sip of her drink before John makes the cuttingly dry comment and so has to try and choke on her champagne as quietly as possible or else be outed as an eavesdropper, easily a fate worse than death at this kind of function.

“Fine,” Scott says, seemingly giving into defeat over the yacht, but not on the auction, “Have a look through the catalogue though, because you are leaving here with  _ something _ or I’m making you come with me to Ibiza in August.”

“Fine,” John agrees, suspiciously easily to Penelope’s mind,

“And something good too,” Scott warns, obviously finding John’s surrender as suspicious as Penelope does, “Back end of the catalogue, none of the cheap stuff at the front.”

“Fine!” John repeats, and the additional irritation in his voice seems to please his brother enough to accept the deal as done.

Whether there is any further debate on the issue Penelope doesn’t know since as the auction starts she has to leave her prime eavesdropping spot to help Felicity with the handling of the lots. Although her new spot up on the stage means that while she can no longer hear the brothers she can see them far more clearly. Alan seems content to simply watch the event unfold, though Penelope is starting to suspect that he and Virgil are betting between themselves on which bidders are going to win the lot. She also thinks that Alan might be winning by a considerable margin.

Gordon quickly gets his card confiscated after bidding ten thousand dollars on a five hundred dollar bottle of wine, although Scott quietly assures Felicity that he will be honouring the bid before gifting the bottle to the previous bidder.

Scott himself seems to be using bidding as a flirting mechanism, bidding on all the same things as Camilla, who giggles and flutters her eyelashes all the way through three bidding wars, winning each of them as he graciously relents to allow her to win. By the time they’re competing for a weekend in Sir Jeremy Graves’ summer villa in Italy he has gravitated to Penelope’s vacant seat so that he can more easily flirt with her. This time Scott wins, and as Penelope discovers later managed to do so by promising to take Camilla with him if she let him win. Penelope doesn’t really have the heart to point out that since he has a personal fortune vastly larger than hers that Camilla would never have beaten him anyway.

As instructed by Scott John doesn’t bid on any of the early lots, studying the latter half of the catalogue with the kind of intensity better suited to cramming for an exam than attending a charity auction. Finally it seems he’s made a choice, squaring his shoulders and smiling to himself and then he looks at her again, and Penny panics slightly at being caught looking yet again. After being caught one too many times Penelope avoids looking at John, but she can still feel his intense gaze on her, an unsettling pressure that just won’t go away.

 

The latter half of the auction is for experiences rather than objects, cooking lessons from a michelin starred chef, a private performance of a broadway show, all ridiculously extravagant, but exactly the sort of thing that this kind of crowd will happily throw their fortunes at. Penelope has contributed a private guided tour of the National Gallery in London, putting to use her sorely neglected Art History degree and up until now her biggest worry has been getting stuck with the Lemaires, as much as she loves Madeline she can’t stand her idiot husband.

 

As expected Francois is the first to start bidding on her lot, getting into a healthy bidding war with a rather tiresome friend of Camilla’s who seems to have had a crush on Penny forever and another guest who has bid on every lot offered by an attractive woman under the age of thirty. Not exactly the best of options in Penny’s view and as the other bidders drop out and Lemaire is the only one left as Felicity gazes about the room asking for any advance on eight thousand pounds Penelope prays for someone, anyone, to save her from this obnoxious man.

 

“Ten thousand, new bidder. Thank you Mr John Tracy,” Felicity says brightly, and Penelope instantly wishes she’d been a little bit more specific in her silent prayer: anyone, except  _ him _ .

 

At least now she has an actual excuse to look at the man, even though he’s still making it hard with his unflinching stare and mysterious smirk. He never takes his eyes off her as the price easily rockets up, the bid ping ponging between him and Francois who is watching John with increasing frustration. This isn’t about the gallery tour anymore, it’s about pride. Which is why Francois does something supremely idiotic as John’s curt nod at Felicity’s prompting takes the bidding to twenty thousand pounds,

 

“One hundred thousand pounds!” he announces, leaping to his feet even as Madeline grabs at his arm and hisses at him to shut up and sit down.

 

Every head in the room turns to see how the forgotten Tracy brother reacts to Lemaire’s thrown gauntlet, but everyone except Penelope seems to have forgotten that this is a billionaire, and one without the restraining influence of a harassed wife. 

 

John lets out a sharp laugh, and waits for Felicity’s question,

 

“Any advance on one hundred thousand?”

 

“Oh what the hell,” he shrugs, “Let’s call it a million.”

 

There are outright gasps at that, and even Lemaire seems to be stopped in his tracks at the sudden jump to seven figures. He finally lets Madeline pull him back into his seat, shaking his head as Felicity asks if he wants to up his bid.

 

“Going once,” Felicity says, scanning the room to see if the excitement will spur anyone into challenging John, “Going twice, sold to Mr John Tracy. Congratulations.”

 

The sale gets the biggest applause of the night so far and it looks like John Tracy might actually be enjoying himself, although Penny can’t quite put her finger on why that makes her more uncomfortable than she was before.

 

Once the auction is over she makes her way through the crowd to find the guest for her suddenly very expensive gallery tour.

 

“Lady Penelope” he says with an oddly formal nod,

 

“Mr Tracy,” she replies, echoing his tone and posture, easily slipping into her training, “That was quite a show you gave us.”

 

“Thank you” he says, smiling as if she’s said something funny and that grates on her slightly.

 

“Though I think you might be setting me up to fail.”

 

“Is that so?” Apparently this is even funnier, and now she really doesn’t like him.

 

“A million is a lot of money for a tour,” she points out, “You might have paid more money than it’s worth.”

 

“Well let’s call it a tour and dinner shall we?” he suggests, never losing his soft smirk, “After all we both know it’s not the art I’m paying for.”

 

“You’re awfully sure of yourself aren’t you?” she says coolly, glancing over him, he just gives her an easy shrug,

 

“I’m a Tracy.”

 

She doesn’t really know how to respond to that, which is probably a good thing since Scott chooses that moment to interrupt, looking suddenly grave, phone pressed to his chest so he can talk to John without being heard by whomever he’s talking to,

 

“You sober?” he demands, not seeming to care that he’s interrupting something,

 

“Of course,” John says, straightening up and dropping the smirk at the sight of his brother’s seriousness, “What’s up?”

 

“Code Green” Scott says, gesturing to the phone, “And Virgil’s had booze.”

 

“It was  _ one _ drink” Virgil sighs, coming over to join them, and leaving Penny with the distinct impression that there’s something very complex going on here.

 

“It was  _ two _ drinks,” Scott corrects him sternly, “And you’re not going.” He turns back to John, “You in?”

 

“Yeah,” John says, “Let’s go.” He glances back at Penny quickly, “I’ll call you” he says.

 

And then they’re gone, and it’s her and the artistic middle boy, who despite his insistence at sobriety has ever so faintly flushed cheeks.

 

“Odd chap your brother,” Penny says idly, not quite sure which one of them she means.

 

“You don’t even know the half of it,” Virgil agrees.


	2. Chapter 2

What Penelope is doing is technically illegal, she knows that. But her curiosity has the better of her and she has to know a little more about the mysterious Mr Tracy. 

 

Except that any real information on one John Glenn Tracy is proving rather hard to find. Sure there’s the usual stuff; articles, net worth, academic record, all four of his college dissertations (bachelors, masters and two PhDs), several high brow scientific papers published in the last few years, but as for anything not public Penny finds things curiously thin on the ground.

 

She can’t accurately pin him to any specific main address for the last three years, or an occupation since he left NASA. In fact it seems that when John Tracy leaves whatever party his brothers have bullied him into attending he disappears off the face of the earth until the next time Scott hassles him into a dinner jacket.

 

The really interesting thing comes when she does something rather inadvisable and runs him through her agency’s database. If anyone goes looking for him they’ll find her search and she’ll be in a whole world of trouble, but there’s something about him that sets her instincts running and so she takes the risk of the sackable/imprisonable offence and runs his details.

 

There are two kinds of people with an Agency file sealed at level nine clearance; senior operatives and high level “subjects of interest” - or as the average layman would call them: terrorists. Of course Penelope knows that John isn’t on her employers’ payroll and so, naturally, she assumes the worst, that she has sold an afternoon of her time to an international criminal so dangerous that she doesn’t have the right level of clearance to access his file.

 

This should be… interesting.


	3. Chapter 3

Penelope arrives at the gallery fifteen minutes early to find John already there, tall and elegant with an air of military precision in the way he carries himself. Penny has the oddest feeling that were she to measure his precise nod she would find it perfect to the exact degree.

 

“Good afternoon,” he says, offering a hand. 

 

He seems to be expecting a handshake, but Penny thinks it should be his turn to feel off-balance. While she does take his hand it’s only to stop him from pulling away as she kisses his cheek. Her bright smile when she steps back to see the mildly startled look on his face is genuine. Her overly familiar socialite act seems to be the way to go in order to re-establish some power here. And of course it never hurts to be underestimated as the ditzy blonde, especially when crossing swords with a new opponent for the first time.

 

“You’re early!” she says, half conspiratorial as she links her arm through his, trying not to enjoy his bemused expression too much.

 

“Only very slightly,” he argues, graciously playing the escort despite his obvious misgivings about this physical contact. “Though can you blame me? You closed down the National Gallery for me, that’s a rare treat.”

 

“One you paid handsomely for,” she reminds him, something that earns her a laugh, sharp and sudden, as if he isn’t used to making the sound.

 

“Yeah,” he grins, “My trustees aren’t particularly happy with my extravagance, even if it is for an evening with  _ the _ Lady Penelope.”

 

“Well then, I’d better give you quite the show then, hadn’t I?”

 

She expects to see more discomfort at her obvious flirtation, but he just smiles and gestures for her to lead the way.

 

She’s put together a pretty comprehensive tour, a journey through British history through the eyes of artists, working on themes rather than decades allowing herself to skip back and forth through the centuries to build the most interesting and entertaining narrative she can.

 

Despite her misgivings she finds herself enjoying the experience, John is an attentive audience and surprisingly knowledgeable about art in his own right. He knows just when to listen, just what questions to ask, gets all of her jokes, even the obscure ones. But at the same time she can’t help feeling like she’s being assessed. 

 

It’s not until they reach her favourite piece, Paul Delaroche’s  _ The Execution of Lady Jane Grey _ that things come to a head, something that shouldn’t really surprise Penny as her love for the work distracts her from her apprehensions about him.

 

“I’ve always felt quite sorry for her,” she says, coming to the end of her monologue on the painting, staring up at the canvas with wistful affection. “The duality of her. Queen and pawn, innocent conspirator, dangerous victim. She is one of life’s true tragic figures.”

 

“See a lot of yourself there?”

 

The question comes out of the blue, and is disturbingly on the nose enough to drag her attention away from the painting and meet his penetrating stare.

 

“Excuse me?” she demands, hackles rising.

 

She can’t exactly deny it. Her reaction has been too sharp, too visceral to do anything other than prove him right. She can see that in his satisfied little nod as he eases his hands into his pockets and turns back to the painting.

 

“Well,” he says airily, “Young woman forced into a dangerous and fairly unenviable position. She’s trapped by the legacy in her veins and, inevitably, it and the ambition of those who wish to control her destroys her. Sounds like a pretty accurate estimation of your future, wouldn’t you agree?”

 

“You don’t know anything about me,” she hisses, taking a step back from him as she tries to deal with his unexpected psychoanalysis of her.

 

“This isn’t what you want for yourself Penelope,” John says softly, never taking his eyes off the canvas, seemingly mesmerised by the shining white of Lady Jane’s dress at the centre of the darkness, “You know this isn’t your life. You’re too good, too pure.”

 

“I- Wha-” She doesn’t know what to say. Words are half her weapons arsenal, and now he’s stripped her of them. “What gives you the right to come in here and talk to me like that?” she demands as she finally finds her voice.

 

“Because,” he says evenly as he finally turns around to look at her, “I have a higher security clearance than you.”

 

“What?” 

 

“So while my file is very off limits to you,” he explains, slowly closing the gap between them, the way one approaches a cornered animal, “I have full access to yours.”

 

“You aren’t Agency,” she says, wanting to move back as he moves forward, but something stops her from taking the step.

 

“No I’m not.”

 

“So how do you know I tried to access your file?”

 

“I have a code patch that alerts me whenever someone starts looking up the members of my organisation” he says, as calm as if he wasn’t just describing how he’s committed an international crime.

 

“That’s illegal” Penelope points out, though she knows it’s a redundant statement, they both already know it.

 

“Somehow I think I’ll get away with it.” And looking at his easy confidence she believes him.

 

“Because of the organisation you work for?” she asks, cautiously starting to piece clues together.

 

“Yes.”

 

There’s pride in the little smile he gives her, it’s a little patronising, almost paternalistic. She gets the feeling that this is a test, one that she’s very close to passing.

 

“Mr Tracy are you trying to recruit me?”

 

“If you’d like us to recruit you then yes, we are.”

 

Something flags up in her mind. Him at the gala dinner, on the phone under his table, the close knit feel of his family, the coded phrases and looks that she had thought were about John’s reluctance to join in, but in this new light suddenly seem far more obvious.

 

“And who is ‘we’ exactly?” she asks, making a little bet with herself about the answer.

 

“I’m the dispatch and communications officer for International Rescue,” John says, unable to stop himself smiling as she goes wide-eyed at the name of the most secretive group on the planet, “But you can call me Thunderbird Five.”


End file.
